(no subject)

The more I read about this, the more it seems that the Semantic Web is some sort of whimsical day dream which is just sort of prancing around as if it were the Next Big Thing. I agree that the benefits of some of the concepts are useful and in some ways necessary to make wading through the immense amount of content out there reasonable, but some of the ideas that people have come up with just don't seem like they'll work, at least not without having everyone learn about what ontologies are, and the differences between different ontology authoring languages. The biggest issue, like usual, seems to be interoperation, since everyone is doing their own thing, often overlapping, but in ways different enough that they can't really be combined without significant additional effort. There are multiple 'standards' for just about everything, which doesn't help unify anything either. It's definitely a hot spot for research, but there's a desperate need for collaboration in order to make any of this ever work.

At least some of the basic elements can be implemented practically, which is what my thesis will be covering...